The hospital tents provided during the year would cover, at six to a tent, as many as in practice are put into them-33,108 men.

The French soldier uses only the shelter tent. Whenever encamped for any length of time he is required to construct huts of small stakes, wattle with brush or straw and thatched. The walls for winter use are plastered with clay mortar.

Such an encampment can be constructed by the troops in eight days, and will last, with occasional repairs, for eight years. The attempt is being made to introduce this practice among our soldiers, who, from their skill in the use of the ax and the abundance of suitable timber, can construct huts with great facility.

Such camps are drier, better ventilated, and more healthy than tents during inclement weather.

The tent is so quickly cooled, if opened at all, that it is kept close and will ventilated; and the troops in tents during last winter suffered severally from typhoid and similar fevers, which would have been much less prevalent had they been hatted.

Temporary barracks and stables have been constructed of lumber in almost all the loyal States for the assembling and organizing of the volunteers and militia. No permanent barracks have been built during the year.

PORTABLE MILLS.

When General Lane projected an expedition through the country west of the Missouri State line he called for a supply of portable mills for grinding corn. Two hundred were provided and sent to Fort Leavenworth. The expedition has abandoned and fifty of these mills have been sent to the Army of the Frontier in Southwestern Missouri. The remaining 150 are on their way to General Rosecrans" army in Tennessee.

It is very desirable to introduce into the army a portable mill capable of girding wheat into good flour. With these in a large part of our country the troops, finding supplies of wheat in the stack or in the granaries, could prepare their own flour, and thus the great difficulty or providing bread would be overcome. The transportation of hard bread requires a large train, whose animals consume the forage which could otherwise be used by the artillery and cavare impeded and operations retarded or prevented altogether.

No portable mills have been made in this country suitable for grinding wheat flour; but it is stated by French authorities that such mills, wigging not over twenty-five pounds, producing, by the labor of a single man, twenty or thirty pounds of good wheat flour per hour, were in use among the peasantry of France in 1812 and 1813. In the "Buletin de la Societe d"Encouragment" of Paris for 1812 and 1813 are drawings of these mills, of which Napoleon caused 500 to be constructed in 1812 for the Russian campaign, and with which, under Marshal Marmont, the army in Portugal supplies itself with flour and bread for six months during the campaign of 1812.

Four hours suffice a French soldier to construct an oven by excavation in the earth or with the materials from a cottage wall, in which bread is baked in two hours after its completion. Thus at every bivouac flour is prepared and bread baked.

Beef cattle, driven with the army, would supply the only other essential part of the ration, and for a campaign of a few weeks little else would be needed.

51 R R-SERIES III, VOL II